Lockout on for NBA

In his five months as a vice president of the National Basketball Players Association, Spurs forward Matt Bonner has been through enough bargaining sessions to cross one potential post-playing career job off his list.

“I wouldn’t want to be Billy Hunter,” Bonner said, referring to the players’ union executive director. “He’s been in way more meetings than I have, and I come out of every one of them with a headache.”

For the league, its players and millions of fans, those headaches blossomed into full-blown migraines late Thursday afternoon, with the announcement of an impasse in collective bargaining talks and the commencement of an owner-imposed lockout.

The NBA said it would begin at one minute past 11 CDT after the expiration of a collective bargaining agreement that had been in place since 2005.

“We were just too far apart,” said Bonner, one of three players who represented the union at Thursday’s negotiating session in New York, along with Hunter.

Owners, claiming losses last season by 22 of 30 teams totaling $300 million, are seeking a major overhaul of the league’s economic system.

In a news release, NBA Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver said the expiring agreement “created a broken system that produced huge financial losses for our teams.”

The players are resisting the proposed changes, which include a hard salary cap they have called a “nonstarter” in any deal.

The union had offered some salary relief, but not enough to forestall the fourth work stoppage in league history. It’s the first since a lockout before and during the 1998-99 season wiped out 32 games of a scheduled 82-game regular slate.

“I’m not scared,” NBA Commissioner David Stern said. “I’m resigned to the potential damage that it can cause to our league. As we get deeper into it, these things have a capacity to take on a life of their own. You never can predict what will happen.” (Mary Altaffer/Associated Press)

NBA Commissioner David Stern said it was “with some sadness” he recommended the owners’ labor relations committee, headed by Spurs chairman Peter Holt, impose the lockout.

After a season that produced a spike in worldwide interest in the NBA and record TV ratings for the playoffs, the lockout is worrisome for owners and players alike, but Stern said he’ll proceed, undaunted.

The 1998-99 stoppage, which also pitted Stern and Hunter at the bargaining table, lasted 204 days and wasn’t solved until Jan. 6.

“I’m not scared,” Stern said. “I’m resigned to the potential damage that it can cause to our league. As we get deeper into it, these things have a capacity to take on a life of their own. You never can predict what will happen.”

Fallout from the league’s latest work stoppage is sure to reverberate from NBA headquarters in New York, to basketball enclaves as far-flung as Boston and Sacramento and San Antonio, and even across the ocean.

NBA summer league already has been canceled, the start of free agency postponed. Veterans and rookies alike are left to train on their own until a new deal is reached, prohibited from use of team-owned facilities or contact with team employees. Players will have to secure COBRA health insurance.

International players who otherwise would have been scheduled to participate in various Olympic qualifying tournaments this summer — among them Spurs guards Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker, and center Tiago Splitter — most likely will be unable to do so for lack of contractual insurance.

Bonner said he was encouraged by the willingness of both sides to continue talking, face to face.

He said another formal meeting will happen “in the near future,” and Hunter said he expected such a meeting could take place “in two to three weeks.”

Bonner also said the NBPA had no plans to decertify, as the NFL players union did when locked out by NFL owners in March.

“We’re going to keep working at it,” Bonner said, speaking by phone from New York after Thursday’s last-gasp bargaining session. “If the lockout goes into the season, it won’t be because we didn’t work at it. The players want to play, but at the same time we need a fair deal and that’s what we’re going to work towards.”

Union chief Billy Hunter speaks to reporters after a meeting with NBA officials Thursday, June 30, 2011 in New York. (Mary Altaffer/Associated Press)

The NBA talks, while contentious, have remained relatively cordial.

“We didn’t end up throwing pads of paper and pens at each other,” Bonner said.

Meanwhile, the union also awaits a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board on an unfair labor practices complaint it filed weeks ago, a decision that could change some of the parameters of the dialogue that has been promised.

Both sides also are keeping an eye on the NFL’s case before the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis that will decide whether the NFL lockout is ended. That decision could affect the NBA’s proceedings and the union’s determination to avoid decertification.

NBA players won’t be the only ones affected by the lockout. Employees of teams and the league also face uncertain futures, depending on how long the lockout lasts. Stern admitted all options would be considered, including furloughs for his employees.

“The people who stand to have their livings impacted by a shutdown of our industry are going to have a negative view of both sides,” Stern said. “I think our fans will tend to have a negative view of ‘Why can’t you guys work this thing out?’”

For his part, when Stern was asked in February about NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s promise to work for $1 if there were an NFL work stoppage, he reminded that he took no salary during the 1998-99 NBA lockout and said he believed a $1 salary would be “too high.”

“We’ll just continue to ask our fans to stick with us and remain patient with us,” he said. “As players, we want to play. That’s who we are; we’re basketball players.

“Right now we’re faced with dealing with the business aspect of our game. We’re going to do it the same way we play basketball. We’re going to work hard. We’re going to be focused. We’re going to be dedicated to getting the results that we want.”